All Sorts

New Zealand Tablet, 17 March 1910, Page 438

All Sorts

The first bicycle with pedals was made about 1840, There are three times as much sea as land in the world. The river Rhine, flows three times as fast as the Thames. . . Wanted, a man to mend a record which has been broken. English workmen spend more than 60 per cent, of their incomes on food. A rich Laplander sometimes keeps as many as 5000 reindeer in his service. , ohips and cargoes to the value of some £10,000,000 are lost yearly around the British coasts. ' During the reign of Charles I. everybody wore boots and spurs, whether he ever mounted a horse or not. The fish-hooks of 30 centuries back were similar to those of to-day, except that the metal employed was then bronze. When a man.throws up the sponge it does not follow that he had previously swallowed it. According to careful' estimates, three hours of closer study wear out the body more than a whole day of hard physical exertion. The United States surpasses all Europe in the manufacture of paper, its production amounting to 1,330,000 tonsPer annum. Germany produces 425,000 tons; England, 260,000 tons; France, 190,000 tons; Austria, 155,000 tons; and Italy, 120,000 tons. ’ ‘ To-morrow,’ proudly announced five-year-old Sidney to his kindergarten teacher, ‘is my birthday.’ ‘ Why,’ returned she, ‘lt is mine, too.’ The boy’s face clouded with perplexity, and after a brief silence he exclaimed: ‘How did you get so much bigger’n me?’ - An English health official recently received the following note from one of the residents of his district: - . V ‘ Dear Sir, beg to tell you that my child, aged eight months, is suffering from measles as required by Act of Parliament.’ What it means to encounter a water-spout in the South. Seas is described by Beatrice Crimshaw: ‘ First of all, a black trunk, like an elephant’s, began to feel blindly about in . midair, hanging from a cloud. It came nearer and nearer with uncanny speed, drawing up to itself as it came a colossal cone of turbulent sea until the two joined together in an enormous black pillar some quarter of a mile broad at the base and probably a good thousand feet high, uniting, as it did the clouds and the sea below. Across the darkening sea, against the threatening copper crimson sunset, came this gigantic horror, waltzing over troughs of tom up water in a veritable dance of death, like something blind, but mad and cruel, trying to find and shatter our fragile little ship.’ A gentleman, who was in the habit of dining daily at a certain restaurant, said to the waiter, an Irishman, who attended him: ‘ Instead of tipping you every day, Pat, I’ll give you your tip in a lump sum at the end of the month.’ ‘Would you mind paying me in advance, sir?’’ asked the waiter. ‘ Well, that’s rather a strange request,” remarked the gentleman. ‘ However, if you are in want of some money now, here’s half-a-crown for you. But did youi distrust me?’ Oh, no, sir,’ grinned Pat, pocketing the half-crown, ‘ but I am lavin’ here to-morrow.’ Almost any commonplace object, magnified under a good: lens, will reveal astonishing and unsuspected form, structure, and life. For instance: Insects of various kinds may be seen in the cavities of a grain of sand. Mould is a forest of beautiful trees, with branches, leaves, and fruit. Butterflies are fully feathered.- Hairs are tubes filled with pith; and ornamented on the outside with scales. The surface of the human body is covered with scales like a fish. A single' grain of sand would cover 150 of these scales, and yet a scale covers about 500 pores. Through these narrow openings the perspiration forces itself like water through a sieve. Each drop of stagnant water contains a world of creatures swimming with as much freedom as whales in the' sea. The University of Copenhagen, brought into prominence by the discovery of the North Pole, was founded by Pope Sixtus IV. in a bull issued June 19, 1475, and on the? petition of King Christian I. This bull empowered the Archbishop of,Lund to establish a university wherever ini Denmark the King should designate. The Archbishop drewr up its statutes and promulgated them on November 28>. 1479. This was almost precisely four years before Luther, the father of Protestantism, so called, was born. The firstuniversity of Lutheranism, or, in other words, of Protestantism, was the University of Marburg in 1527. The University of Copenhagen of to-day comprises all faculties of auniversity propernamely, of theology, law, medicine, philosophy, and the sciences. About 2000 students attend’ its lectures by 97 professors. It has a great library of 350,000 volumes, with about 6500 manuscripts.